India's business houses increasingly rely on NGOs for spending corporate social responsibility funds: Crisil

By A Representative
India’s top consultants, Crisil, in its latest “CSR Yearbook”, have said that Indian companies’ attitude towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) “seems to be changing ever so slowly” even though they are “realising that businesses can sustain and thrive only if the communities they serve also endure and flourish.”
Noting that in fiscal 2016, India Inc “inched closer to the 2% CSR spending mandated by the Companies Act, 2013”, Crisil, which has based its analysis of 4,887 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, says, only “1,505 of them, or 30%, met the criteria stipulated in the Companies Act for mandatory spending and reporting on CSR in fiscal 2016.”
“Of this lot, 77% reported their CSR spend”, says Crisil, adding, 7% of the eligible companies “did not disclose such details.” Crisil does not include unlisted companies in its analysis “for want of data”.
The Companies Act, 2013, requires corporates to spend at least 2% of their average net profit of the past three years on CSR activities. Fiscal 2016 was the second year of implementation of the CSR obligation.
Pointing out that the companies’ CSR spending “edged up to 1.64% in fiscal 2016, compared with 1.35%”, in fiscal 2015, Crisil says, “The absolute money spent by them was over Rs 8,300 crore compared with Rs 6,800 crore in fiscal 2015.”
However, it underlines, “To reach the mandated 2% mark, these companies would have had to spend another Rs 1,835 crore”, adding, “There were 133 companies that either didn’t spend a dime, or were still freezing their CSR agenda.”
“The spending profile of larger companies improved significantly, with more than half of them adhering to the 2% mandate versus roughly a third last year”, Crisil says, emphasizing, a major reason why there was 22 percentage point jump in adherence by the larger companies is “they are using implementing agencies, mainly non-governmental organisations (NGOs), for execution.”
Noting that “partnership with NGOs helps boost compliance”, Crisil says, “Interestingly, over 84% of the large companies – with sales of Rs 10,000 crore or more – use implementing agencies”, though regretting, “Somewhat counterintuitively, many smaller ones prefer going solo.”
“In fiscal 2016, more than half of the companies spent 2% or more, except those from telecoms and IT”, says Crisil adding, “Commodities and diversified industries stood out, with 60.2% and 59.2%, respectively, of companies in the sector spending 2% or more. Telecoms performed poorly with nearly half of the companies spending less than 1%.”
“What’s good to see is education and healthcare getting the bulk of CSR spend”, says Crisil, adding, “That’s heartening given that, as a percentage of total government expenditure, the money set aside in the Union Budget for 2015-16 – Rs 68,306 crore for education and Rs 44,516 crore for healthcare – is well below what other BRICS nations commit normatively.”
It recommends, “Something similar can be done in sports, where a minuscule Rs 1,592 crore was budgeted last fiscal so that India can harvest a better medals tally at the next Olympics in Tokyo.”
“Fiscal 2016 saw some companies announcing that they were joining hands for CSR activity, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself weighed in on its many virtues on several occasions”, Crisil says, though adding, “Yet, actual instances of collaboration have been hard to come by.”
Under the earlier CSR provision in the Companies Act, 2013, a company could conduct activities only on its own or through a holding, subsidiary or associate company. But this changed with a February 2014 notification, which allowed two companies to undertake CSR activities jointly through a separate legal entity that could be a trust, society, or a third company.
“This is particularly beneficial to smaller firms that find it hard to spend on CSR projects directly given their relatively modest corpus”, Crisil notes, adding, “However, large corporates stand to gain no less since collaboration is the greatest force multiplier when it comes to making an impact.”

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

India’s green energy push faces talent crunch amidst record growth at 16% CAGR

By Jag Jivan* A new study by a top consulting firm has found that India’s cleantech sector is entering a decisive growth phase, with strong policy backing, record capacity additions and surging investor interest, but facing mounting pressure on talent supply and rising compensation costs .

Beyond sattvik: Purity, caste and the politics of the Indian kitchen

By Rajiv Shah A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that appeared in the British weekly The Economist . Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “ sattvik food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.

Search This Blog